The dragon's harem

A walking black shadow clad in a dark shroud as he glided through the desolate and barren hellscape like a ghost. If anyone saw him, they would think death itself prowled hell at blinding speed, but those who saw the real death knew that it was an emotionless maid who harvested souls with a sickle and sometimes with a knife that came out of her soles.

Devils, sinners, monsters, and horrors all run away from his path, allowing him to pass without anyone daring to stop him. Of course, at the start, a few did, but once those got obliterated just by him crashing into them, none dared to challenge him ever again.

Rumors started spreading among the devils and sinners alike. Some thought that he was a powerful devil, some thought that he was the son of either Asmodeus or Maharaja, and some even speculated that he was an angel in disguise sent by the gods to find someone. The goddess of magic used to do that in the past.

No one knew what the black shadow wanted or searched for, but they were sure getting in his path was a death wish. That, until one day, almost four days after Arad’s fight with Pain, Darkness, and Madness, he had finally stopped at the top of a rocky black hill.

A caravan of devils was transporting a few new sinners that were found in the wastelands. A usual procedure, but now their caravan came to a sudden halt. The powerful pit fiend standing at the front immediately sent a call for help to Asmodeus. “The Black Shadow, he is standing in our way, motionless.”

The pit fiend expected her to send reinforcements, ask him to fight until death, or at least explain what the Black Shadow wanted, but all he got was one simple order. “Don’t move, don’t resist, not even hell can save you.”

The devils stared at the Black Shadow, afraid and confused. And soon the Black Shadow moved, approaching them. They felt a chill run down their spines, The thing moved weirdly; it didn’t seem like he was walking or running. His head remained still, and he moved toward them at a constant speed. What terrified them more was that they couldn’t hear his footsteps or sense any magic coming from him.

Nothing, it was as if he wasn’t there at all.

The Black Shadow approached the pit fiend and looked at him. Without even knowing it, the pit fiend’s knees were shaking. He was looking straight into the Black Shadow’s hood, but he didn’t see anything, just pure darkness, infinite and unfathomable even to a devil of his power.

The Black Shadow didn’t speak, but the devil could swear that he heard something rattling inside his brain. Once the Black Shadow left him and went to inspect the carriages, Asmodeus’s voice rang in his head. “He checked your memories. You’re lucky none of your comrades have harmed his target.”

The Black Shadow flew past the cages of sinners, looking at the people inside. Some paled and cowered in fear, some cried, some begged for mercy, some daring women even tried seducing him, but the black shadow ignored them all. Except for two men.

One was tall, gaunt, and glared at the Black Shadow with a terrified face, and crawled to the edge of his cage. The Black Shadow looked at him in silence for a few seconds and uttered a single word. “Pity.”

That man was one of the bandit overlords whom Arad killed around Alina. This is where the bastard ended up. It seems there was quite the lag as he sure the man died months ago… or perhaps he was lost in the wilderness of hell for all that time before being picked up by devils? He didn’t know for sure.

The next man was what Arad was looking for. A short and shrivelled man with a long bushy beard, curly hair, and bright brown eyes. The man was hugging an old and broken violin. He rocked his head back and forth, mumbling to himself in a fit of madness, and didn’t seem to notice the Black Shadow standing at his cage.

The devil, standing at the back, noticed that the Black Shadow wanted something to do with the half-dwarf and rushed to open the cage. But before he could, the Black Shadow reached into the cage, touched the half-dwarf’s shoulder, and teleported him outside.

The Half-dwarf still didn’t respond, mumbling to himself with wide-open eyes. The Black Shadow seemed to slouch down with a sat gesture and then touched the dwarf’s hand. Soon, clanking black chains appeared on the Black Shadow’s hand. Those chains seemed to be linked to the half-dwarf’s ribs.

There were many of those invisible chains coming into light as the Black Shadow touched them; those were the chains of hell that bind sinners to it.

The Black Shadow then clenched his fist on one of the chains and shattered it.

After a moment of silence, all hell broke loose. The devils backed away with terrified faces, and the sinners, even those who were scared of the Black Shadow, started crying and begging, pleading with everything they had, offering their whole beings. They now learned that the Black Shadow can break the chains of hell, and he can free them from this place.

Their pitiful cries fell on deaf ears as the Black Shadow broke the half-dwarf’s chains one after another. The half-dwarf didn’t react at all, but once the last chain cracked, he suddenly disappeared as if he had never been there.

The sinners fell silent. Was the half-dwarf really free now? Or was he eaten by the Black Shadow? None of them knew. But… a woman among them had already been skinned alive three times by the devils. Even getting eaten by an eldritch horror and erased from reality seemed like a better deal. As she begged him to eat her as well, so did all of the other sinners.

But the Black Shadow didn’t look at any of them. He just turned toward the devils and approached the pit fiend at the start of the caravan, looked at him for a few seconds, and then flew away.

The pit fiend fell on his knees, still shaken from what he saw. There is only one person in the world who can break the chains of hell. That was the overgod Cain Lisworth, but even that needed to cast a few spells to shatter the chains. This Black Shadow broke them with his bare hands.

“What kind of monster is he?”

Asmodeus’s voice rang in his head almost immediately. “Remember the human spawn, Sara?”

This pit fiend was the one headsman who was supposed to execute her that day. Now he has changed jobs to a relaxing one. “Don’t tell me it’s her?”

“No, but she is going to marry him soon. You can say that he is her husband. I told him about you, but he didn’t seem interested in your life. You’re a lucky one.” She giggled in his ear, and he wanted to yell at her. It was his job; he didn’t pick who he had to kill. But of course, a pit fiend would never talk back to Asmodeus.